On Thursday, June 15, the Broadcasting Council (BC) sanctioned the Cinema 1 TV channel for non-compliance with the General Concept of the program service. The BC members decided to apply a fine equal to 25000 lei.
According to the BC, the period subject to control was randomly selected, and it was conducted on May 1-7, 2023. The monitoring demonstrated that Cinema 1 broadcast over 40% of audiovisual programs by producers which were not under the jurisdiction of the Republic of Moldova, namely, movies from the Russian Federation, and indicated that they accounted for 22%. As for the percentage reserved for European audiovisual works, the sanctioned TV channel indicated 70%, but the calculations showed a rate of 47% of the total amount instead.
“At the same time, we also detected deviations from the Structure of the audiovisual media service according to types of programs/shows, which stipulated that, during the reporting period, Cinema 1 audiovisual media service broadcast 1.02% of educational and cultural programs, and the indicated amount (in their concept – author’s note) was 14.87%,” Cătălina Bunescu, who presented the report on the subject, said during the BC meeting.
Since the beginning of this year, the Cinema 1 TV channel has also been sanctioned and warned by the BC for repeatedly breaching the General Concept of the audiovisual media service five times, for not complying with the local and/or Romanian language product quotas, and for other breaches. The total amount of fines exceeds 111000 lei.